Pets, Products or something else?

A recent post on our city's backyard chicken list has been pinging around in my head for days. I haven't posted back because I wanted to make certain I'd figured out what I wanted to say.

The poster had some aging hens, and she didn't want to keep them because they weren't laying any more. But she had some requirements about what she wanted to do with them -- she didn't want to kill them, nor did she want anyone else to kill them.

Essentially, she was hoping that someone on the list would have a recommendation for some sort of chicken retirement home, where the very tame chickens could be petted and cared for until their lives naturally ended.


This got me thinking about many different things, but of course because I have chickens, I thought of my relationship with mine. Of the two chickens featured above, the black one is still vigorously laying, while the black and white one isn't. She's one of our original chickens, and easily six years old.

Generally, I plan to kill the laying birds once they're past laying age (and for me that is somewhere around 3-4, given my experience so far), so why haven't I killed the "old lady" up there? Well, the first six chickens we got were celebrated by the children. Loved, named, played with, and the kids asked me to promise not to kill the birds. It was a promise freely given and happily kept. These birds were pets. The eggs were secondary for the children.

The black hen? She's from iteration #3, and she doesn't have a name. She's cared for primarily by me, and she's a great layer. The kids (primarily the younger girls) do occasionally "play" with the chickens, but it's a different kind of play. For me, she's primarily an egg layer, and eventually soup.

Let me get this part straight -- I don't enjoy killing animals for its own sake. Anyone who does isn't a homesteader or a farmer, they're just in need of serious help. But I do consider myself a realist. I eat meat, after years -- years -- of vegetarianism, and neither decision was made lightly. When I kill an old hen I do so because I am not running a retirement home for chickens, nor am I treating them as pets. I'm rearing my chickens as my grandmother did on her farm: for use. They are treated pretty well (amazingly well compared to factory farmed chickens; just read Temple Grandin's Animals Make Us Human: Creating the Best life for Animals to see why that is) and then they are killed when their use to me is done.

And this brings me back to the post on the chicken list. What I think got me was the inherent contradictions in this person's stance. They wanted the chickens to be treated as pets (not killed, loved), but they weren't willing to take on that role. They wanted to act as farmers, and be done with the animal when its use was over for them, without being responsible for what that meant either. This "neither fish nor fowl" (please excuse me) stance isn't morally defensible, unless of course they wanted to fund the chicken's retirement, by, say, setting up a fund for their lifetime of care at an animal rescue organization. Maybe they meant to be hard-nosed about it but found that they couldn't stomach it in the long run. And that's okay, but it's something to be very clear about.

And maybe that's what I'll post -- at least the gist of it -- because someone needs to speak up for these kinds of decisions to be made ahead of time. New chicken owners are going to have to think before they pick up the cute little fluffy layers or else people end up doing crazy things like "setting them free" with the obvious problems that entails.

Sometimes it's not a lot of fun being the grownup.

Building the Chalet au Poulet

Get ready folks, this is a long one!

Our chicks have been in the coop for two months now; the chicken yard is finished, the nesting boxes are in place, the eggs are coming, and I’m finally getting around to posting Kevin’s description of the construction. And here he is.

The chicken coop is sturdy and a little stylish for two main reasons. First, as a carpenter I like to have fun with whatever project I’m working on and I’d be embarrassed if fellow carpenter friends saw shoddy or simplistic work.

Second, a lot of the coops I've seen look like they were thrown together by a hog farmer in Appalachia smoking a corncob pipe in between pluckin’ a banjo and huntin' Opossum. No offense to all our hog raising, banjo playing, Opossum hunting friends out there, but you know what I mean.

The underlying philosophy: With almost any project I work on, especially those for myself, I try to use reclaimed lumber. Procuring and prepping reclaimed lumber can take a lot more time, but it’s well worth the effort and can still look very good while saving trees and money.

The design: I built the coop against the fence to save materials. I thought setting the posts at an angle would look cool and reduce mud splash at the bottom of the coop. I didn’t think the lower roof line would be a problem, but it is proving to have a disturbing fondness for the top of my head even when I duck as I approach the door. Because of that and the limited light that reaches the coop, I am thinking of replacing the plywood roof with clear corrugated roofing panels. (If I do, I’ll use the old roof for the new wood storage shed/compost cover.)

We have a lot of raccoons around here; at night I hear them skittering under our window, and folks definitely lose chickens to them. The wire mesh on the coop actually goes down about 10" into the ground and is bent at an outward angle, so even if a raccoon were to try to dig under the frame, it wouldn't make it inside. The cement slabs are there for extra protection against digging predators.



So, as with many things, but especially carpentry, one choice affects the whole process. For example, the "cool"-looking wall that leans out combined with the fence that is far from plumb made for some pretty odd angles. Even so, the framing of the coop wasn’t that hard, but when I chose to have the reclaimed fence boards meet in the middle of the door at roughly a 45-degree angle, that proved a bit trickier. Fortunately I had spent the previous four months doing the finish carpentry for a new eco home with curved walls and an arched ceiling, so my brain was already stretched out and primed for atypical thinking.



And finally, moving day!

We realized the chicks weren't going to get much direct sunlight, and since we had some space to the side of the coop, we added a fenced-in yard. You can also see the nesting box door open in the coop itself; it's hinged now and allows us to reach in to get the eggs from the outside. The lower door lets the chicks go in and out of the yard, and at night we can lock them inside (though it's just a hole in this shot).

The yard door allows us to clean out the yard easily. The mesh isn't as fine on the yard as the coop because the girls are only outside during the day.

We use the hole to reach in and latch the door. The chicks use it to get a gander at the yard.

Some visitor did try to dig under, so we put the bricks there.

Here's Big Mouth checking out the new doorway.

The girls love love love the dirt, especially surrounded by kale. The stump is there for interest. Really.


Here's the interior early on, when the chicks still had their little food and water trays. They sleep huddled up on the perch. Here you can also see the non-planed side of the wood; I like the rustic look.

And here's the interior finished, with the nesting boxes (a repurposed fruit box) and ladder,


the big hanging food dispenser,

and below Dinky in the nesting box, you can see the automatic water dispenser.

The long and short of it is I spent about four times as long building this as a rectangular coop would’ve taken, but as you can see it was worth it. By the way, check out how nicely the 30-year-old redwood fence boards look after being run through the thickness planer.

Here’s what we used:

RECLAIMED MATERIALS
Redwood fence boards
4x4 redwood posts
2x6 redwood joists
2x4 redwood studs
2x4 wire (outdoor run)
Plywood

PURCHASED
Rolled roofing
Roofing tar
Nails
Screws
Hardware cloth (1/4" wire)
Flashing
Door hardware
Simpson ties
Roofing felt

Here's the trench dug for the pipes to reach the coop. (We had to muscle the squash out of the way.)

And here, below the hinges on the door to the nesting box, is the spiggot with a forked hose bib; one permanently runs to the chicks' water and the other we can attach a hose to.

Here you can see the squash really making a run for the coop!

Altogether materials (not including the waterer) cost about $150. The labor, a lot more. The peace of mind knowing our chicks are safe and sound in their fancy, eco-poulet home? Priceless.

Weighing our choices

We love kale, and right now it’s the happiest thing in the garden, covering about a third of one 25-foot bed.

The other night before bed we decided to pull three whole plants because they were shading some little broccoli. And here they are:


In two large pots of boiling water, we blanched it in about 8 batches, soaked it in ice water and strained and bagged it into this:


Altogether it took two (grown but very tired) people 45 minutes to 1 hour, 10 to12 gallons of water, and the natural gas of the stove to bring the kale from garden to storage, where it will use the energy of the freezer.

I like keeping track of garden input---water, our time, energy, and money---and output. Does it make sense to use all that water (which we then reused in the garden), the energy from the stove and freezer, and our time for 6 pounds of food that we could buy at the farmers’ market for maybe $12?

But then we have to figure the time and energy---fueled or not---to get to the farmers’ market and the fuel used to transport the food from farm to market, etc etc.

Obviously for us the answer is yes, it does make sense to invest the time, energy, and money required to produce our own instead of procuring someone else’s. We get unquantifiable pleasure and satisfaction from the relatively small but still revolutionary act of self-sufficiency that growing our own food represents. We benefit from slowing down and noting the growth that happens one day to the next. Our kids get to see us dig in the dirt, and so much more.




Next time, though, we’ll start processing before bedtime.

Bountiful ... and free

Seeing as I just finished a large, beautiful bowl of garden-bounty salad, I figured it's high time to put in an appearance here. Yes, we've been working hard in the yard, transforming it from a pretty typical urban backyard---neglected lawn, half-hearted attempt at welcoming social spaces---into this:


and then this:


and now this:


Back in the (proverbial) salad days, when I had more money than time, I’d hire someone to come out and advise, design, do the digging, swing the hammer. The yard reflected that, too, I think: it was pleasant enough but half-hearted and impersonal; it failed to lure us outside, to invite us to take part.

These days there’s more time than money, but we’re rockin’ the yard. Kevin and I can both swing a shovel, and it’s amazing what you can find for free. Our first veggie seeds came from Seeds of Change, picked up free at Full Belly Farm’s Hoes Down, and we planted them in containers given us by a friend.


In addition to free horse manure from local stables, we picked up a truckload of free, gorgeous topsoil from Annie’s Annuals.


Included as a bonus was a treasure trove of plantlings that apparently didn’t pass muster with them; we’ve replanted some and are anxious to see what they are.


We'll use as much rainwater as we can on our food plants, caught in four 275-gallon recycled, food-grade plastic totes, and gray water from baths and laundry on the rest.

Having a carpenter for a partner helps, too: lumber for the chicken coop--to--be comes from Kevin's stash of salvaged wood; the cement slabs that make up the garden beds are the remains of a client’s patio; and a reclaimed old window forms the front of our seed-starting space.


Then there’s the free bounty that, simply, surrounds us: Fewer than 10 forays netted us a good 30 lbs of fresh mushrooms---mostly oysters but also Boletus edulis (porcini), winter chanterelles, honey mushrooms, black trumpets, cauliflower, and candy caps (for cookies)---last winter.


We’ll inoculate the fresh-cut oak logs we picked up recently and hopefully have our own supply of oysters, lion’s mane, and shiitake mushrooms for seasons to come.


We salvaged a trash bag--size bunch of perfect bagels from Noah’s; we harvested pineapple guavas and persimmons from Santa Cruz friends and neighbors and turned them into chutney and pulp. The wall of raspberries along the house we transplanted from among a neighbor’s volunteer shoots.

Kevin promises that my little pineapple guava bush will fruit---for the first time ever---under his loving care; it’s already sprouting new growth like crazy, and standing next to it smelling the exploding wisteria, it’s impossible to doubt him.


Even the mature apricot tree, transplanted just 8 weeks ago to a sunny, well-fed corner spot, is setting fruit. The apple, persimmon, and pluot trees will surely be next. The dwarf Meyer lemon, my steadfast, oldest garden friend, looks like a kid about to burst with a really, really juicy secret.


Aside from the garden, the baby chicks are becoming gawky teenagers.



In a few months their coop and yard will line the back fence and we'll add eggs to our harvest. With some luck they'll be joined by prolific bees, and honey will round out our store of foraged huckleberries, blackberries, and all those other reminders of summer that make winter a little sweeter.

This yard, though, is ours. It begs us outside to see what’s happening. It inspires us to walk in the world with our eyes open for additions that will improve it. It promises to feed our spirits as well as our bodies.